Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

I can read the motion. It says that there's professional support for medicinal cannabis and that it needs to be listed on schedule 4 of the Therapeutic Goods Act. But let's be clear: there are different schedules, and, I'm not sure as to whether it belongs in schedule 4 or a different schedule. We have tightly controlled opiate drugs, which are also very desired on the black market for drug use, that are prescribed, and, as far as I understand, they don't belong on schedule 4, so we need to look very carefully at which schedule these drugs belong on.

We need to make sure that people have a clear, accessible pathway. I have spoken to patients in Western Australia who, despite the supposed process of the TGA and the supposed processes of state governments to give people access to medicinal cannabis, could still not find a prescribing doctor. And the paperwork attached to being a prescribing doctor and putting yourself out there and finding a supplier—which you can't find regularly through a pharmacy—has proven just too great for too many patients in getting access to the medicinal cannabis that would help them and their children and their families.

So Labor, in 2015, made a very clear commitment that we wanted to work with state and territory governments to ensure there were nationally consistent laws to allow successful access to medicinal cannabis for those who are terminally ill or who have other clinically identified medical conditions that medicinal cannabis may benefit. What we've seen in the Turnbull government is a government that is too slow in catching up and in adopting a similar policy to Labor's. And it's been even slower, I have to tell you, in implementing anything. You've been too focused on getting headlines and have forgotten about patients. Let's be clear: this is not about allowing free access to a drug for recreational use—although I would like to put on the record how proud I was to be part of the Gallop Labor government that back in the early 2000s decriminalised cannabis in small quantities because of the large social toll that it was taking on the community in terms of putting people on a criminal pathway.

But that's not what we are debating today. It is about ensuring that there is a legal and regulated market so that family members and carers aren't forced to rely on the black market to relieve the pain of their loved ones. We have seen in report after report that patients are facing barrier after barrier. It's almost impossible to find a prescribing doctor. When I spoke to patients in Western Australia, they could not identify any, despite the fact that doctors now have a right to prescribe this drug. So they've given up hope that things will become easier and they don't believe what the Turnbull government says. They've trusted them before and things have not improved. (Time expired)